Noel drew a long breath, and the air filling his lungs felt alien.

  The sweet smell of gunpowder from the remnants of fireworks celebrations in the distance mixed chaotically with another, far sharper and more unpleasant aroma: the scent of scorched ozone, like the smell of electrical wires burning from a short circuit, coupled with a faint metallic tang. It was the smell of dying energy.

  The wind carried them to Mirror Canyon.

  The sky above his head slowly recovered.

  Noel watched the webs of light of the Chessboard Array that had blazed in the atmosphere begin to dim. The silver lines connecting the stars thinned, blinked weakly, then extinguished one by one. The normal, starry darkness of night reclaimed its throne, as if the colossal war just now was merely a fever dream.

  However, Noel knew it was real. The proof lay before his eyes.

  Around the lip of Mirror Canyon, the twenty-seven pillars of the Ignis Magna Beacon did not extinguish. They merely ceased their rampage. The wild dragon fire that had whipped the sky had now shrunk, returning to upright, stable, and calm ritual fire pillars. They stood like eternal sentinels watching the gates of hell with unblinking orange eyes.

  Noel lowered his gaze from the sky to the ground. And that was when his stomach churned.

  In the expanse of the Valley of Death—the zone embraced by the Iron Mountains where Mirror Canyon reigned—the sight was truly pathetic and disgusting.

  Those black inks.

  They were the remnants of shadows that failed to escape. Blobs of dark matter that survived the main pillar explosion but were too weak to fly up and reach the atmospheric web. Now, they were stranded.

  To Noel’s eyes, they no longer looked terrifying like when they spewed out as a giant pillar earlier. Now, they looked like deep-sea fish forcibly thrown onto dry land.

  They writhed.

  Those dense, oily liquid blobs crawled on the black canyon lips. Their irregular bodies pulsed weakly, spasmodic, as if their nervous systems had been scorched. Noel saw them trying to drag themselves back into the abyss, but their energy was spent.

  Sshhh... shhhh...

  The sound set Noel’s teeth on edge. It was the sound of their hissing as their etheric skin made contact with the holy ground blessed by the beacon fire. They blistered. Thin black smoke billowed from those deformed bodies. They were weak, wretched, and dying.

  Noel felt a strange mix of disgust and pity. They were like parasites plucked from their host, floundering helplessly waiting for death.

  However, Noel’s reverie shattered instantly.

  Creeeeak... scrape...

  The sound of metal scraping against stone. The sound came from behind him, from where his family stood.

  Noel turned, and his breath caught. His heart pounded fast, not because of enemies, but seeing his own flesh and blood.

  The Members of House Sanjaya.

  Under the dim orange light of the beacon fire, Noel saw the noble illusion crumble completely. His uncles, aunts, and cousins no longer looked human.

  They didn't stand still. They began to move.

  Not away from danger, but toward it.

  Noel saw one of his uncles—a fierce man—now stepping forward with heavily hunched shoulders. His eyes were wide open, pupils constricted sharply, staring wildly at the ink blobs down there. His breathing sounded rough, hah... hah..., a feral breathing rhythm of someone suppressing a primal urge to kill.

  In his hand, the spiked war mace wasn't raised. The uncle let the heavy mace head drop to the stone floor.

  He walked dragging it.

  Scraaaape...

  The spiked metal scraped roughly against the andesite stone platform floor. The friction was so hard it sparked yellow embers jumping around the Uncle's feet. That nerve-wracking sound dominated the night's silence, more terrifying than the roar of any monster.

  Beside him, Aunt Sanjaya walked with a strange gait—light yet lethal, like a stalking big cat. The Naginata in her hand twirled slowly at her wrist. Its sharp blade caught the firelight, reflecting a blood-red glint. Aunt’s face was flat, emotionless, yet her jaw hardened until her neck veins bulged.

  Then there was the Grandmother from the eastern branch family. The hunched old woman walked limping, but her eyes... God, those eyes burned. She dragged an iron chain tipped with a meat hook. Clank... clink... The chain hit the stone, sounding like a death knell.

  They all walked past Noel.

  Noel felt dwarfed. He felt like a lost child amidst a line of giant executioners. A cold chill radiated from the bodies of his own family—an aura of Killing Intent so thick it gave Noel goosebumps and constricted his lungs.

  The soldiers around the platform—elite troops with advanced assault rifles—instinctively backed away. The soldiers' faces were deathly pale. They lowered their weapons, trembling, making way. Their warrior instincts knew: Do not block a predator's path.

  Noel saw his family heading to one point: The Stone Stairs.

  That narrow, steep ancient staircase split the cliff, descending directly to the lip of Mirror Canyon, to where thousands of those inks writhed dying.

  Uncle Sanjaya was the first to step onto those stairs.

  Scrape... Thud. Scrape... Thud.

  The sound of dragged iron mace and stomping combat boots echoed rhythmically. Every time the mace hit the edge of a step, sparks flew, illuminating the darkness of those damp stairs.

  One by one, the other family members followed. They descended into darkness, leaving the comfort and safety of the overwatch platform. They went down to wash their hands in black blood.

  They didn't look like noble heroes. They looked like cruel garbage scavengers. They went down to ensure not a single piece of that "filth" remained alive.

  Noel stood frozen at the edge of the guardrail, gripping the cold iron until his hands hurt. He watched his family's backs slowly sink swallowed by the dimness of the abyss.

  The hissing sound shhh... of the black shadows down there suddenly turned into panicked shrieks. Those creatures knew death was descending the stairs.

  Then, amidst the sound of dragging metal and fearful hisses, another voice was heard.

  Raspy. Dry. Old.

  "SANJAYA WILL NOT DIE..."

  Noel turned to the center of the platform.

  The Old Ancestor Sanjaya still sat there. Alone in his wheelchair.

  The old figure didn't go down. He merely watched.

  The Ancestor’s right hand gripped his black iron staff so tightly that his wrinkled knuckles looked like protruding ancient tree roots. His milky white eyes stared straight ahead, piercing Noel’s back, staring into the abyss where his descendants were rampaging.

  The Old Ancestor paused for a moment, letting his first sentence hang in the cold night air.

  Then, his voice hardened. No longer an old grandfather's voice, but the sound of clashing steel plates.

  "...SANJAYA LIVES ETERNALLY."

  It wasn't a prayer. Noel felt it in his bone marrow. It was an Iron Doctrine. It was his family's slogan, he shuddered as the old ancestor spoke it.

  Down there, at the bottom of the stairs, Noel heard the first wet thud.

  SPLAT!

  Followed by the sound of metal cutting soft flesh. SHING!

  And the ink creature's scream was cut off.

  The slaughter had begun.

  Explosions and lights of fire shone in the Valley of Death.

  Noel looked back at the Old Ancestor.

  The old man was now alone in the middle of the overwatch platform which felt too large and empty. The night wind blew hard, fluttering his thin white hair. The cold outside air surrounded him.

  The soldiers still stood frozen in the shadowed corners, too afraid to make a sound, too afraid to move. They were unwanted spectators in this family's ritual of savagery.

  The Old Ancestor paid them no heed. He only stared into Mirror Canyon which was now quiet again from explosion sounds, but began to grow noisy with the sound of his family's work.

  His milky eyes narrowed. Under the dim light of the beacon, Noel saw a sharp glint there. The lightning of an unfinished war.

  Noel was still transfixed at the edge of the guardrail, watching his family's backs slowly disappear swallowed by the darkness of the stone stairs, when another shadow fell covering his body.

  He turned. His breath caught.

  His mother, Vanessa, stood there.

  The woman Noel had known all this time with the gentleness of a housewife, now looked alien. Her hair was tied high in a practical ponytail style. Her face was cold, unsmiling, as hard as alabaster. In her hands, she gripped two spears.

  Without a word, Vanessa thrust one of the spears toward Noel.

  "Take it," his mother ordered. Her voice was flat, tolerating no refusal.

  "Your blood calls."

  Noel stared at the weapon. It was a spear with a long black ebony wood shaft, tipped with a black blade curving elegantly yet lethally. There was a carving of a thorny rose stem winding at the base of the spearhead.

  Hesitantly, Noel’s hand reached out. His fingers touched the cold wooden shaft.

  Grip.

  As his palm closed perfectly around the spear shaft, Noel’s world shifted.

  The sensation came instantly—a jolt of static electricity traveling from the palm, up the arm, then exploding in the brainstem. It wasn't pain. It was... recognition.

  Noel felt as if he had just found his third arm missing since birth.

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  The weight of the spear—which logically should be heavy—felt as light as a feather in his hand. Its balance point was perfect. Noel didn't need to think. His arm muscles moved on their own, guided by genetic memory buried in his DNA for hundreds of years.

  Whirrr... TAP.

  Noel twirled the spear at his wrist. The movement was so fast, lithe, and precise. The spearhead sliced the air with a soft whirring sound, then stopped exactly one inch beside his foot with absolute control.

  He stared at his own hands in awe. How could I do that?

  Vanessa didn't praise him. She only nodded slowly, as if it were natural. Then, his mother turned and began descending the stone stairs toward the hell below.

  "Follow Mother," she said.

  "Leave none alive."

  Noel took a deep breath, inhaling the smell of ozone and death. He tightened his grip on the spear. His fear wasn't gone, but now covered by burning adrenaline.

  He stepped forward. Following his mother. Descending into the Valley of Death toward Mirror Canyon.

  The last step was passed. Noel’s boots landed on the wet, slippery canyon floor.

  Here, the smell was far more putrid. The smell of charred meat and sulfur. Thin smoke billowed from the ground. And before him, lay a nightmare scene.

  The remnants of those ink shadows were everywhere. They were no longer a horde in a giant pillar, but black blobs the size of large dogs crawling, writhing, and hissing. They looked deformed, parts of their bodies melting, yet they still possessed sharp shadow claws and gaping hungry mouths.

  One black blob near Noel suddenly noticed his presence.

  HISSSSSS!

  The creature reacted aggressively. Its body solidified, forming sharp spikes, then leaped lunging toward Noel’s neck with the speed of a rattlesnake.

  Time slowed down.

  Noel’s conscious mind screamed in panic: Run!

  But his body... his Sanjaya body... screamed: Kill.

  Noel’s eyes didn't blink. His feet shifted back half a step, forming a solid stance.

  Without needing brain command, his hands swung the spear.

  SLASH!

  It wasn't a random strike. It was a surgical slash. The silver spearhead sliced the air in a perfect horizontal line.

  The silver blade cut the black blob's body right in mid-air.

  No blood.

  POP!

  The creature exploded into a cloud of black dust that instantly broke down into faintly glowing exploding light particles. Annihilated instantly.

  Noel was stunned. He felt a fine vibration in his spear shaft—not the vibration of impact, but the vibration of satisfaction from the weapon. The spear was thirsty, and Noel had just given it a drink.

  "Watch left!" Vanessa’s voice sounded sharp.

  Two more shadows crawled fast from behind rocks, trying to ambush Noel from his blind spot.

  This time, Noel didn't wait. He welcomed them.

  He spun his body. The spear became an extension of his spinal axis.

  SWISH!

  Noel thrust his spear forward. The tip of the spearhead pierced the "head" of the first shadow. STAB.

  Then, utilizing the momentum of that thrust, he jerked the back shaft of his spear sideways, slamming the leaping second shadow.

  THWACK!

  The second shadow was thrown back hitting the stone wall, hissing in pain.

  Noel didn't let it recover. He leaped forward. His spear twirled overhead—a silver windmill of death—then plunged downward.

  CRAAAK!

  The spearhead impaled the shadow's body, pinning it to the ground. Silver energy radiated from the puncture point, burning the creature from the inside out until it became ash.

  Noel pulled his spear back. His breathing began to hunt, but not from fatigue. From exhilaration. A terrifying sense of joy.

  He looked around. In the distance, he saw his mother moving like a ballet dancer of death, her spears thrusting and slashing with cold efficiency.

  Noel wouldn't be outdone.

  He ran to meet a group of shadows gathering near a puddle of water.

  That night, at the bottom of Mirror Canyon, Noel Sanjaya was no longer a youth who only stood silently observing. He moved fluidly. His spear was a brush, and he painted death on the canvas of darkness.

  He thrust, pulled, slashed, and spun. Each movement merged with the next without pause. His feet stepped lightly among slippery rocks, dodging shadow claws with sharp instinct.

  Slash! Swish! Stab!

  Three shadows annihilated in three seconds.

  Noel spun, his coat flapping, his spear creating a silver circle of protection around him.

  He felt cold sweat dripping on his temples, but his eyes burned bright. He could feel the rhythm of this battle. He could feel the song of his spear.

  For the first time in his life, Noel didn't feel quiet and cold. He felt... warm, hot, blazing. He felt powerful.

  Amidst the rain of ash and explosions of fire bursting from the shadow corpses he slaughtered, Noel stood tall. He twirled his spear one last time to throw off the remaining black residue on the blade (chiburi), then slammed the butt of the spear onto the ground.

  THUD.

  The echo of that sound merged with his wild heartbeat. He stared at the remnants of darkness before him with the gaze of a predator. He was a Sanjaya. And this was his playground.

  Noel wiped the beads of sweat seeping on his temples with the back of his hand. The heat in the Valley of Death began to sting, not just from Ignis Magna, but from the intensity of energy popping at the bottom of Mirror Canyon.

  House Sanjaya had finally stepped in. And as usual, their way of working was the definition of terrifying efficiency.

  Noel observed his uncles, aunts, and selected cousins moving on the front lines, in the zone already abandoned by regular troops. They didn't use noisy and dirty assault rifles. They used Art—combat arts of blood inheritance.

  Down there, the sight looked surreal. A series of small explosions popped in empty air, chasing each other at high speed.

  Boom! Crack! Zzap!

  Those weren't boring orange gunpowder explosions. They were mini fireworks with an eye-blinding color spectrum. There were cobalt blue fire explosions freezing the air. There were emerald green electrical sparks crawling wildly like glowing tree roots. There were violet purple bursts exploding like small nebulas, disintegrating whatever they touched into dust.

  Like a festive new year's parade. Beautiful, artistic, and mesmerizing.

  Tens of thousands of regular soldiers lined up at the edge of the defense perimeter witnessed the sight with gaping mouths. Their eyes sparkled, reflecting the colorful explosions on their corneas. They whispered in awe, some even cheered stifledly every time they saw a large golden explosion cleave the air.

  "Look at that! So beautiful..." "That's the power of the Great Lords..." "The evil spirits are being burned!"

  Noel snorted softly hearing that naive awe. Fools, he thought coldly. You don't know what you are watching.

  They couldn't see it. Their ordinary human eyes couldn't catch the visual frequency of the Shade Walker.

  To those soldiers, the Sanjaya family looked like they were dancing and setting off fireworks into empty air, exterminating imaginary "evil spirits".

  But Noel saw it. Through his trained eyes, and the aid of special thermal goggles he wore, he saw the true horror.

  The valley wasn't empty. Thousands of Shade Walkers—hunched humanoid creatures with transparent skin refracting light—were running fast, leaping, and ambushing with long claws. They were perfect invisible killers.

  Every beautiful exploding "firework" was actually a moment of fatal impact.

  That blue explosion happened when Uncle Gerald punched a Shade Walker's chest shattering it to pieces. That green flash was the moment his aunt slashed the necks of three creatures at once with her energy whip. That purple burst was a destruction spell melting the enemies' transparent flesh before they even touched the ground.

  There was no beauty there. There was only precision slaughter. The bodily fluids of those creatures splattered everywhere, but because they were invisible, the fluids vanished in the air before touching the ground, leaving a perfect illusion of cleanliness.

  "Mass hallucination," Noel analyzed, his eyes staring at the crowd of soldiers still in awe.

  They felt safe because they thought the enemy were abstract spirits that could be driven away with pretty lights. They didn't realize that if even one Shade Walker slipped past the Sanjaya family's "picket line," the creature would decapitate ten soldiers before they realized they were dead.

  The Sanjaya family's efficiency in cleaning these pests was so high, that this war looked like a folk festival.

  Noel lowered his gaze back to the spear in his hand. "Enjoy the show while you can," he mumbled to the thousands of oblivious spectators. "Because soon, the fireworks will run out... and the true darkness will not be this pretty."

  Amidst the fireworks party of death, Noel’s eyes locked onto one dominant figure.

  His father. Maronn Sanjaya.

  The man stood in the center of the battle vortex, yet he looked like someone waiting in line for a late bus.

  A Shade Walker—a two-meter-tall creature with razor claws—tried to ambush from a blind spot behind Maronn. The creature leaped soundlessly, utilizing its invisibility to target the patriarch's neck.

  Noel didn't blink. He knew he didn't need to shout a warning.

  Without turning, without changing his stance, Maronn’s right hand moved casually backward.

  The movement was lazy, as if swatting a fly.

  BAM.

  The back of Maronn’s hand hit empty air.

  A disgusting wet cracking sound was heard.

  The optical illusion broke. The Shade Walker was thrown out of its stealth mode, its neck broken at a ninety-degree angle, then its body exploded into black fog before even touching the ground.

  Maronn didn't even look at his enemy's corpse.

  He instead sighed long.

  His broad shoulders slumped. The expression on his face wasn't anger, not fear, and clearly not satisfaction.

  It was an expression of acute boredom.

  Maronn Sanjaya looked profoundly disappointed. He looked at his own right hand, then looked at the scattered remains of the Shade Walker with a disdainful gaze.

  His lips moved, mumbling something Noel could read from his lip movement:

  "Weak. Too fragile."

  To Maronn, these creatures capable of tearing apart an elite platoon in the blink of an eye were merely crackers. One touch, shattered. No resistance. No sensation of bone fighting back when broken. No adrenaline.

  Noel shook his head in disbelief.

  Crazy, he thought.

  What kind of standard does this old man use?

  Shade Walkers were a nightmare for every military unit on this continent. They were fast, invisible, and lethal. But to Maronn Sanjaya, they were merely boring pests.

  What kind of monster does he want to fight? Noel asked himself, horrified imagining the answer.

  Will his father only smile if what comes out of that hole is a Titan as tall as a building? Or an Ancient Demon whose skin is as thick as tank armor?

  Noel stared at his father’s back now walking sluggishly looking for other prey, as if strolling in a boring park.

  The bloodlust that had momentarily flared in Maronn’s eyes now dimmed again, replaced by the frustration of a predator finding no worthy opponent.

  He's not looking for victory, Noel concluded coldly. He's looking for pain. He's looking for an enemy who can make him bleed.

  And on this battlefield, not one was yet worthy of scratching Maronn Sanjaya’s skin.

  "Huh..."

  Noel exhaled a long breath.

  Thick white steam spewed from his mouth and nose, clumping in the air for a moment before torn by the mountain wind.

  The hot sensation that had momentarily slapped his face—radiation from magic battles and artillery—now vanished without a trace.

  The mountain air reclaimed custody of this place.

  Cold. Piercing. Quiet.

  Noel tightened his coat collar. This cold was different. It wasn't merely low temperature; it was the thermal void occurring when massive amounts of death energy had just been released and then suddenly vanished.

  He looked around the crater down there.

  The fireworks party was over.

  The colorful parade of energy explosions had died.

  The number of Shade Walkers in the valley was no longer statistically significant.

  From thousands of entities flooding like a deluge earlier, now only one or two remained, being lazily hunted by his cousins. They finished off the remnants of the enemy like bored cats playing with a dying mouse. No more urgency. No more danger.

  And along with the disappearance of that threat, the ancient mechanism at the lip of the abyss reacted.

  The Ignis Magna Beacons... shrank.

  The orange pillars of fire that had raged licking the sky ten meters high, now dimmed drastically in unison.

  Their fire tongues dropped, shrank, and thinned until only the size of an ordinary campfire. Their previously fierce light now became dim and languid.

  "Responsive ritual," Noel analyzed internally.

  The Ignis Magna fire was designed not only as illumination, but as a counter-measure. The fire lived and burned large when sensing thick dark aura. When enemies were gone, when dark aura thinned, the fire fasted. It returned to standby mode.

  The valley went dark again.

  Military spotlights returned as the main dominant light source, sweeping invisible carcasses beginning to evaporate into thin black smoke.

  The atmosphere became silent.

  Too silent.

  But to Noel, the shrinking of this fire wasn't a sign of victory.

  Quite the opposite, the shrinking fire made shadows in the corners of the abyss grow longer and denser.

  It was a sign that the "preliminary round" was over.

  The stage had been cleared.

  And usually, after preliminaries were over... the main champion would only then be called into the arena.

  Even the "Dark Gate" itself had never truly opened wide.

  What happened tonight was merely a leak.

  However, a leak from hell is still a flood for the human world.

  Noel stood at the highest point of the platform, his sharp eyes recording the apocalypse panorama divided into two realms: Land and Air.

  Down there, on the ground surface, Anukh Ramj—the Corpses of Darkness—were continuously vomited from the belly of Mirror Canyon. They were like black sewage overflowing from a clogged drain. Millions of those deformed bodies crawled, piled on top of each other, and climbed the cliffs.

  But the Carta military had turned the battlefield into a factory assembly line.

  Artillery fire and tank barricades weren't designed to stop them, but to channel them. Like floodwater forced into flood canals, the horde of Anukh Ramj was herded into the 200 Gates scattered at the foot of the Iron Mountains.

  Noel saw those concrete mouths swallowing thousands of monsters every minute.

  Inside there, at the end of every gate labyrinth, execution teams were waiting.

  Giant chainsaws, industrial flamethrowers, and mechanical grinders worked endlessly.

  "Biological waste management system," Noel noted coldly. "Efficient. Brutal. Merciless."

  Then, Noel’s gaze shifted to the sky.

  If the land was a physical slaughterhouse, then the sky was a chessboard of gods.

  Shade Walkers—the Spirits of Darkness—who managed to escape gravity, surged flying into the air like thick black smoke. They tried to spread, tried to fly toward human cities to find hosts.

  But they hit an invisible ceiling.

  Above the valley, across the entire Carta sky, their Grand Array had been activated.

  The Giant Thousand Constellation Chessboard.

  Noel saw lines of blue and gold light stretching across the night sky, connecting mountain peaks like artificial constellations. The lines formed an intricate grid pattern, caging the entire airspace of Mirror Canyon.

  Every time a Shade Walker hit that light line...

  Zzzzt!

  They didn't explode. They were erased.

  Those evil spirits hissed, burned by pure constellation energy, and crumbled into glowing ash falling slowly to earth.

  And for the remnants of spirits that managed to fall to the ground in half-destroyed condition, the Burner Agency was waiting.

  Special forces in silver fireproof suits moved among the rocks. Their weapons weren't rifles, but mana incinerators. They burned those ectoplasm remnants until no trace was left, ensuring not a single dark spore remained.

  The ground shook with the thudding steps of Anukh Ramj.

  The sky glowed with the death of Shade Walkers.

  Noel lowered his gaze, staring at the distant horizon behind the mountains, toward where the royal capital lay.

  There, millions of people might be sleeping soundly, or perhaps partying celebrating the festival, unaware that the wall separating them from extinction was being battered mercilessly here.

  Noel’s lips curled into a thin smile full of irony.

  "Tonight..." he whispered to the wind carrying the burnt smell of corpses and spirits.

  "...Carta must be very lively."